. “I dropped him off and I asked him all kinds of questions. Afterwards, he said, ‘You gotta see this.’”

She did. In 1998, Clark watched Douglas Buchanan Jr. die by lethal injection. Buchanan was convicted of murdering his father, stepmother, and their two children. She said she found it very weird to have someone look at you as they are preparing to die. But it hasn’t stopped her from continuing to watch executions.

“It came across my mind, and it still does, that these people know when they’re going to die, and the people they killed didn’t. They get to say their goodbyes, so I really can’t say I felt sorry for them.”

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Amber Pittman watched the 2010 execution of Melbert Ray Ford, who was convicted of killing a former girlfriend, Martha Chapman Matich, and her 11-year-old niece, Lisa Renee Chapman.

An Associated Press reporter at the time, Pittman said others in the newsroom were unsure they could watch, so she volunteered for the assignment.

“They were concerned with seeing something like that, that it would affect them negatively… But I’ve always been really good at compartmentalizing.”

Did it affect her?

“My son was a baby at the time and he’s eight now. I’ve been through a divorce, had my father die. But I remember this (execution) more clearly than the birth of my son. Every detail is clearly etched and hasn’t faded at all. Sometimes a certain smell or song will bring a memory back — this memory isn’t like that. I’ll think of it often. With no prompting at all.”

Still, Pittman would do it again.

“People want to know what happens and they’re entitled to an accurate portrayal of it. I always prided myself on that as a journalist — being accurate and fair. I think this brought a sense of peace to the family. The elementary school still has a wing named after this little girl and a framed picture of her. She liked horses.”

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Dale Baich has witnessed 13 executions across the United States.

“Witnessing executions is about bearing witness to what the government is doing to its citizens. And I think it’s important to talk about it,” said Baich, a public defender in Arizona who specializes in final appeals for prisoners on death row.

Earlier this month, he testified in the U.S. Federal Court about ethics of using the lethal injection drug midazolam, a drug he has seen numerous times in action.

One of those times was with Joseph Wood, a client. Wood asked Baich to come to his execution as a show of support. Wood suffered through the longest execution in U.S. history — almost two hours — one widely considered to have been botched.

It’s a really solemn ritual… In the room, there are benches and risers. Once all the witnesses were seated, two monitors came on and we saw people in medical garb and heard them talk to the prisoner, and we saw the needles inserted. At that point the sound went off and the screen went dark and the curtains opened on Joe, strapped to a table. A warden read the execution warrant and asked Joe if he had any final remarks. Then it began. Joe started turning his head right and left, his eyes began to close. It looked like any other legal injection that I had witnessed. He looked very still. Then, all of a sudden, his mouth opened wide, his head lurched back, and he rose up against the straps keeping him on the table. The witnesses all jumped. It appeared they were startled by what they saw. Joe began gasping and struggling to breathe. And that went on for another hour and 57 minutes.

Wardens had used an untested combination of the sedative midazolam and what was intended to be a painkiller, hydromorphone, to kill Wood.

“I think people have the impression that lethal injection is very humane, that they just go to sleep,” Baich said. “But we now know that a violent act is taking place.”

What does it feel like to have a client executed?

“It’s something that stays with you,” Baich said. “That’s all I can say.”

The last fully public execution was in 1936.

Rainey Bethea, a 26-year-old black man, died by hanging after being convicted of the murder of Lischia Edwards, a 70-year-old white woman. Vendors sold hot dogs, popcorn and drinks. Revellers shouted in the streets until dawn after “hanging parties.”

Public executions ended after the hanging. They were becoming “ghoulish public events,” explained Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor who studies the death penalty.

“There was a feeling that with the pain and botched hangings … it was inviting the worst in human behaviour.”

But Arkansas state law requires those with no connection to the crime to be present at each execution as representatives of the general public. In March, the sheer number of planned executions, eight in 10 days, had the Department of Corrections looking for volunteers.

Corrections director Wendy Kelley asked the audience at a civic club address to volunteer. The crowd tittered, thinking she was joking. She was not.

Facebook comments on reports of Kelley’s request were divided between those horrified at the idea and those eager to volunteer. But the request worked.

“We’re full at the moment,” Solomon Graves, a corrections spokesman, said on April 19, 2017.

Andy Kahan, victim advocate for the city of Houston, describes himself as the “architect” of a law passed in Texas that allows family to be present for the death of the person who killed their loved one.

“Seventy-five per cent of victim’s families opt for it…. There’s no such thing as ‘closure.’ But it means closing that chapter in their life book.”

Kahan describes a father who witnessed the execution of his daughter’s murderer.

“Colour returned to (the father’s) face after the execution. I saw humanity return to that man.”

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But why would someone unrelated to the victims volunteer to see executions?

“I don’t see what the purpose is. It makes zero sense to me,” Kahan said. “It’s a personal, intimate setting. I don’t know. It defies logic.”

For Baich, watching these people die while thinking of them as killers does an injustice to their memory.

“For me, I get to know my clients as people. I see the humanity in them. They have so much more to them than the day in their life when they did something horrible.”

When my assistant said there was a call from the White House, I picked up, said 'Hello' and started to ask if this was a prank

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